


smeared lines

by translevi



Series: love at first broken bone [5]
Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Reincarnation, Artists, F/M, Healthy Relationships, Love, Painting, Trans Levi (Shingeki no Kyojin), Trans Male Character, annie is a very supportive girlfriend, its just pure ok, levi has a lot of mental disorders and probably needs a hug, levi is good at abstract art and i will fight someone over this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-04
Updated: 2017-01-04
Packaged: 2018-09-14 18:27:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,819
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9197864
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/translevi/pseuds/translevi
Summary: It steals her breath away, the reminder of another life so clear in the center of it. Surrounding it, the ink is like stray lines, scratched and swirled around the centerpiece, darkening it the closer it got to the snarling teeth spread wide into the center, leaking into a void.She remembers the feeling of looking into the open jaw of a titan, as if it were about to bite you in two.She remembers.





	

**Author's Note:**

> i should be getting ready for work

He draws, she finds out. He has an eye for it, can see the beauty in the cruel world around him. His bleak outlook, she thinks, makes the world more beautiful when he catches it. It is a secret; one of the few she had yet to find out from him, but it is an amazing one.

“It’s… weird.” He breathes to her one night, a confession, a wonder, and an insecurity wrapped together in two short words. But, she understands, how can hands used to destroying create?

He doesn’t let her see the journal he scribbles in, and she doesn’t go digging, to push past his walls before he was ready would hurt them.

She catches him sometimes whittling down pencils and draining the ink from pens with every twitch of his fingers curled up on the couch with only the glare of the tv to cast light on him.

He doesn’t show her, so she doesn’t ask.

It’s private, something unique to him that he craves the relief of, but she wonders. She knows that he cannot draw people, cannot draw figures at all really, the human form is lost on him as is most things.

But she knows that deep down whatever he does is beautiful, so she waits.

~~~~

It comes to fruition one night when the wind howls outside their apartment and the clash of thunder reminds them of cannon fire. The rain slams into the windows and rakes the branches like claws against the glass. This is what she wakes up to.

Levi is in bed beside her still, and for that she is thankful, rain does something to him - although she doesn’t know what. He is drawing, can hear the scratch of it against the paper as he works. She makes her arrival into the waking world known by shifting closer to him, letting her fingers press into his thigh before slowly sitting up, giving him all the time he would need to hide.

He doesn’t.

Like a cat, curiosity gets the better of her, and slowly she looks down. She drinks it in slowly, the light making the black ink hard to decipher at first as her eyes adjusted to the darkness before scanning the lined pages.

The edges of the paper are without color, the scratches come the closer you get to the center. It steals her breath away, the reminder of another life so clear in the center of it. Surrounding it, the ink is like stray lines, scratched and swirled around the centerpiece, darkening it the closer it got to the snarling teeth spread wide into the center, leaking into a void.

She can see it too clearly, through the wavy and jagged lines, she remembers the feeling of looking into the open jaw of a titan, as if it were about to bite you in two. She remembers.

His drawing scares her.

It’s good.

With slow hands she takes the book from him, skipping through other pages; eyes caught open and wide, half dead-half alive, fully terrified. She finds a page where the light lead of a pencil gave way to gnashes of ink, remembers the sight of blood on grass.

“You should try painting.” She breaths against his neck later that night, when the thunder has calmed and lightning no longer flashes through their curtains.

He makes a noise that she knows to mean he’ll think about it.

~~~~

He does not immediately throw himself into work, he has a job he hates and bills to think about before needlessly splurging on something he has never needed before. Months go by after that night before he even thinks of it. Only when Annie gets a new job - one relevant to what she loves - as a personal trainer at a gym does he stop to think about it. Annie does not push, she does not pull, but she does encourage.

So he buys the stuff.

For awhile it sits there, taunting him, making him hate the fact that he had bought them to begin with. He is not an artist; never will be.

Inspiration comes to him as it always does, with a flood of memories and the hot taste of copper in his mouth at 3 am, when it all is too much everythingness and he drowns in a sea of salt.

She finds him the next morning, exhausted and half asleep where he is downing coffee so hot it burns his tongue.  There is paint on his cheek and dried on his fingertips and the ball of his thumb.

He does not draw figures, does not draw animals or buildings or trees, doesn’t draw anything really, but he breathes life into the canvas from colors.

It is a small canvas, he had got nothing extravagant to start with, but the precision of it renders her speechless, it would not make sense to most people, she thinks, only those that knew.

Erwin would recognize it, Hanji would recognize it, his squad would recognize it - she recognizes it.

The green is blurred with different shades and patterns, tinges of darker mixing with light, lines carved painstakingly soft to remember the wind flowing through the pattern. The grey splotches in the middle of it, slightly harder, somehow not taking away from the softness of the green.

She does not have to check to know that half of the brushes remained unused this time around, the paint on his fingertips tell of how he put it together by hand, teasing the colors with digits to perfection. The blue and white overlaps and blends together simultaneously, barely outlined by darker portions.

She recognizes the wings of freedom.

So would anyone else.

She doesn’t say “I told you so,” does not make a snarky comment, simply leads him to the sink to help wash off his hands before sending him back to bed.

She takes one last look at the painting before going to work.

~~~~

He keeps painting, much to her pleasure, and she takes great joy in watching the way colors fall into place under his hands, pulled from vague portions of memories onto canvas.

There are things she recognizes - shades of browns and greens, a forest of endless trees - and things she does not - inky blackness, splotches of yellow and orange, a clayish brown - that makes her curious. This is a way for him to vent, so she does not ask.

But she does put it out there for him, she has an endless passion for him and she will not hesitate to show him off whenever he allows it. So she promotes him, with or without his knowledge, she shows his work off on her phone, posts pictures of them online, watermarked and nowhere near as good as they could be in person,  she makes sure that he is recognized.

Then he is recognized without her at his side.

_[text: sonic ‘06] what the fuck_

_[text: sonic ‘06] what have you been doing_

 

_[text: coffee stealer] what do you mean_

 

_[text: sonic ‘06] someone just asked if id be interested in displaying my art at a local convention_

_[text: sonic ‘06] so i repeat_

_[text: sonic ‘06] what in the fuck have you been doing_

 

_[text: coffee stealer] say yes, ill show u when u get home._

~~~~

She takes the day off from work to ensure she will be at his side whenever he needs her. He does not like being around large groups of people, does not like being something to gawk at, so she stands by his side.

The convention itself is nice, a fun and inviting place full of people young and old looking for culture and new experiences.

Levi’s work is popular.

He shows off paintings he had done before and some new ones not even Annie had seen yet, and when there is a lull in people she takes a moment to look around and drink in all of them.

There is a jar near each artist’s corner for people to drop money into to support the artist and their work; Levi’s fills up quickly.  
She catches him eyeing it, uncomfortable and insecure, seeking her gaze out more often than not through a sea of other people. He is strong, and he is brave, but he is allowed moments of weakness.

Later in the afternoon, between a break of the rushes of people she turns to explore a painting she had not yet see. With Levi talking to Erwin and Hanji, waiting on the arrival of his squad, she separates secure in the knowledge that he will be alright.

The painting haunts her in ways only her memory can corrode her with - because that is what it is.

She recognizes the forest as she did in the other, smaller painting devoted to just it. But this is different.

She sees black hair, hanging limp with splotches of red and grey - blood and wires; Gunther - of blonde and brown and _red_ mixed in the grass - Erd - orange and pink mixed with red on a tree - Petra, - hazel and red on the ground - Auruo, - but her eyes are drawn to the right of the center, to the whites and yellows, flickering through the green. ‘Sunlight?’ She wonders as the blonde of her hair falls out of place over her eyes.

No, she thinks, me.

This is what Levi saw when she ran away.

She runs again.

Back towards Levi, up against his side just as he had started to look for her, Hanji’s glasses glint under the overhead lights, looking at her, wondering. Hanji has always scared her, in the deepest recess of her mind she wonders if they would still like to dissect her.

Levi is congratulated by strangers, by his friends, and by his squad before the day is over and they can finally go home, with over 300 dollars in tips from their jar to add to the bank. There is still 4 days left of the convention, if they can make this much each day they will have a bit more to put away than they usually do. They may even have spending money.

Levi curls up tight against her that night, shaking softly in her arms as she runs her thin fingers through his hair, relaxing him under her ministrations.

Isabel and Farlan will be there tomorrow before she can get off of work and meet up with him.

Painting to him is terrifying and therapeutic, he is scared and he wants more. She will be there to catch him no matter what road he takes.

She is not running from him this time, she is racing towards the finish line wherever he decides to put it.

She kisses “I love you” to his forehead before she lets her eyes close, and the raw, shuddering breath she gets in return tells her all she needs to hear.

They will greet tomorrow together.


End file.
